White supremacist mass shooter Dylann Roof is set to be executed for killing nine people in the South Carolina church shooting.
Per The Independent, the US Fourth Circuit Court of Appeals ruled on Wednesday, August 25, that Roof is to remain the first person ever sentenced to death for a federal hate crime.
The mass murderer was initially sentenced in 2017 for his assault on a Bible study session at Mother Emanuel AME Church in Charleston on June 17, 2015.
Roof, aged 21 at the time of the incident, opened fire with a Glock 41 .45-caliber handgun on the 12 worshippers gathered on the premises.
After apprehending him, police charged Roof with 33 counts of hate crimes and nine counts of premeditated murder.
His victims included 54-year-old Cynthia Hurd, 26-year-old Tywanza Sanders, 45-year-old Sharonda Singleton, 59-year-old Myra Thompson, 70-year-old Ethel Lance, 87-year-old Susie Jackson, 74-year-old Reverand Daniel Simmons Senior, and 41-year-old church pastor and State Senator, Clementa Pinckney.
The Independent reports that Roof has remained unrepentant over his crimes, and previously expressed a belief that a white supremacist uprising will exonerate him and make him the governor of South Carolina one day in the future.
According to New York Post, Roof contended in his court appeal that he was not competent to stand trial, and questioned whether he should have been permitted to represent himself during the penalty phase.
He further alleged that errors in the penalty phase were unjust and said some of the charging statutes were unconstitutional.
However, New York Post reports the judge's panel concluded: "No cold record or careful parsing of statutes and precedents can capture the full horror of what Roof did. His crimes qualify him for the harshest penalty that a just society can impose."
They continued: "Dylann Roof murdered African Americans at their church, during their Bible study and worship. They had welcomed him. He slaughtered them.
"He did so with the express intent of terrorizing not just his immediate victims at the historically important Mother Emanuel Church, but as many similar people as would hear of the mass murder."
Now 27, Roof will remain on death row in Terre Haute Federal Prison in Indiana.
